What Does a Digital Marketing Consultant Do? Roles & Responsibilities

Technological advancements and the rising number of Internet users in the past few years have made businesses witness a gradual shift in consumer choices. Rather than traditional marketing strategies like telecalling, billboarding, broadcasting on the television, or newspaper printing, customers are more responsive to digital marketing strategies like email campaigns, social media, and content marketing.

Hence, most businesses have started investing more in digital marketing to adapt to the changing times. This has created a constant demand for digital marketing consultants who can help brands build an online presence. 

Who is a Digital Marketing Consultant?

Digital marketing consultants guide businesses on promoting their products and increase their sales through online marketing techniques. They usually have a degree in marketing or business development. Digital Marketing consultants possess extensive knowledge of different digital marketing strategies.

While small businesses generally hire external digital marketing consultancies or freelancers to handle specific digital marketing campaigns, big companies have dedicated full-time digital marketing specialists.

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Digital strategist consultants act as advisors for businesses and help them decide on the most effective digital marketing strategies for business growth. They are aware of the company’s vision and goals and accordingly, create marketing strategies to cater to target audience’s needs. A digital marketing consultant experiments with innovative techniques and tools to increase customer engagement based on several factors.

They juggle multiple responsibilities daily, including enhancing the brand image by leveraging the right social media campaigns, coordinating with designers/content writers for content marketing, communicating with the legal department to ensure compliance with the industry guidelines, etc.

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What Does a Digital Marketing Consultant Do?

Now that you have a brief idea about who is a digital strategist consultant, here is a list of their core responsibilities: 

1. Creating Marketing Strategies

The principal task of a digital marketing consultant is to plan effective digital marketing strategies for any business. However, a digital marketing consultant needs to consider various essential factors before creating strategies as every company has unique requirements. These include business goals, available resources, primary objectives, target audience, and timeline. Digital marketing consultants also guide brands in the execution of their strategies.

2. Increasing brand awareness

Another key responsibility of a digital marketing consultant is to establish a brand’s identity and increase its awareness on social media platforms. A digital marketing consultant comes up with creative marketing campaigns to promote the a company’s USP (unique selling point) and increase conversions. They understand a brand’s purpose, target audience, competitors, and the market landscape to help brands communicate their voice on different platforms.

3. SEO

This is a crucial tenet that help businesses improve their website’s ranking on search engines. A digital marketing consultant provides digital marketing consulting services plans an SEO strategy for businesses by performing keyword research. They also advise what relevant content can be posted on a company’s website. This helps generate organic traffic on the website, thus leading to increased sales and revenue.

4. Creating a Content Calendar

Responsibilities of a digital marketing consultant also include planning content. They do it by creating a content calendar for implementing various marketing strategies. The content calendar makes it easier for a digital marketing executive to understand the right time to launch campaigns across different social media platforms.

5. Analytics

Digital marketing consultants are also skilled in data analytics. They use various tools to get analytics of social media accounts and target audiences. Digital marketing consultants plan the best strategies based on these analytics. They monitor consumers’ responses to digital marketing campaigns and use various tools for content analytics like text & image analytics, search engine & social media analytics, web analytics, and app analytics to predict the results of marketing campaigns.

Skills of a Digital Marketing Consultant

Digital marketing consultants are experts with diverse skillsets. The following are some of the most relevant skills you must acquire if you plan to build a career in the digital marketing field.

1. SEO & SEM

The primary objective of digital marketing is to increase organic traffic to the website to get more leads and increase sales. Since SEO and SEM are the two most essential digital marketing strategies for increasing traffic, their in-depth knowledge is necessary for every digital marketing consultant.

2. Data analytics

Another essential skill for digital marketing consultants is data analytics which requires using different software to collect and process information related to social media platforms, target audience, competitors, and various marketing strategies. Data analytics skill helps digital marketing consultants prepare the most effective digital marketing campaigns based on real-time figures.

3. CRM

Customer Relationship Management or CRM is another critical skill for digital marketing consultants. It helps them understand consumer behaviour and analyse the needs and preferences of the target audience. Good knowledge of CRM is also beneficial for digital marketing consultants as it helps them guide businesses in enhancing their customer experience. 

4. Designing and video editing skills

It is also beneficial for digital marketing consultants to have basic designing and video editing skills. It helps them advise their clients better on what types of infographics they should include in their digital marketing campaigns and on how to use videos for a higher conversion rate and SEO rankings. So, they must learn how to use photoshop and Adobe Illustrator.

5. Email marketing

Digital marketing is not restricted to social media marketing. Email marketing is also a powerful marketing tool for generating leads and conversions. Digital marketing consultants must know the nitty-gritty of email marketing skills to plan compelling campaigns.

6. Copywriting

Copywriting skills can also be advantageous for digital marketing consultants while creating digital marketing campaigns for businesses. They can write taglines, scripts, captions, and social media posts for enhancing brand awareness and increasing engagements on various online platforms.

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Conclusion

A digital marketing consultant is an expert in online marketing. They may either work independently as consultants or join a company as a full-time employee. This allows them to earn per hour/project rather than a fixed salary. It facilitates significant earning potential. As nearly all businesses are putting efforts into establishing their brand identity and improving their social media presence, digital marketing consultants get plenty of opportunities to work with famous brands and small businesses. However, this requires years of experience and excellent skills. 

If you are intrigued with the digital marketing industry and want to build a career in this field, MBA (Global) with a Specialisation in Digital Marketing from upGrad can be beneficial for you. Its core subjects include branding, strategic thinking, marketing analytics, SEM, leadership, social media, and content marketing.